Walking the Camino to Santiago de Compostela: How a long-awaited pilgrimage finally came to fruition (Joanne Drayton, December 20, 2024, New/Lines)
[I]t was the Camino that set my mind on fire and the matter of relics that gripped my imagination and nagged at me during the COVID-19 pandemic, when New Zealand’s borders were shut to international flights from March 2020 to August 2021. By the time Kiwis were finally free to move and tickets vaguely affordable, I felt like a shaken bottle of sparkling wine ready to pop its cork. I had ruminated on all aspects of pilgrimage and was about to explode with curiosity and the need to escape.
An ancient walking path across the top of the Iberian Peninsula to its northwestern corner was the perfect place to abscond to. For over a thousand years, Christian pilgrims have traveled multitudinous miles to the town of Santiago de Compostela to worship at the shrine of St. James. Many began their journey outside Spain, in places such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Medieval pilgrims often followed the trail on foot for months, sometimes years. The dangers were myriad, and many never made it back home.
The huge commitment of time and resources, the risk — I was fascinated to know what propelled these pilgrims. I wanted to understand what these journeys meant to them, and why, in this world of virtual reality, people still travel in increasing numbers to sites of pilgrimage. Why do shrines and their relics, which should be anathema in modern times, still draw people? Why, when human experience is increasingly digitized, coded and uploaded, do people still feel the imperative to be present in a place and to walk?
So my partner Sue and I joined the throngs of pilgrims seeking answers on the Camino. While we were actually walking the trail, The Daily Telegraph published an article predicting that 2024 would see nearly half a million pilgrims journey to the shrine of Santiago (St. James), the greatest number ever. The article also pointed out the exponential increase in traffic between 1984, when just 423 pilgrims claimed the Compostela (certificate of completion), and 2023, when numbers hit a record 440,367 — a number that is about to be exceeded because 2024 figures are up 12.5%.
But, fortunately for those averse to crowds, the Camino is not just one pathway. The map to Santiago de Compostela looks like the crazy cracks a flicked stone creates on a car’s windshield. Every line radiates out in a jagged pattern from the central point of impact. In nearly a thousand years of pilgrimage, many routes have been traveled. From their end point of Santiago de Compostela, nestled in the far northwest of Spain, the routes spread out across the country — heading upward along the west coast of Portugal, hugging the northern border of Spain, or cutting straight across the country to the Mediterranean. Today, however, the Camino Frances — the one we chose — has emerged as the most popular. In the 1980s, the route was marked out by a local priest who made it his mission to reignite people’s passion for pilgrimage.